Mayfair rental signals return of City boy and bonus

Published 11th Oct 2009

A Mayfair triplex apartment — with cinema, car lift, secret courtyard garden and swimming pool — is to let at £40,000 a week.

This rent, which is more than 250 times what you would pay for a studio in Clapham, is seen as an emblem of the confidence in the London housing market, where the return of the City boy, with his bonus, is emerging as the theme of the autumn and winter.

Lucy Morton, of WA Ellis, the estate agency offering the Mayfair flat, suspects that a film star will be the short-term tenant of the apartment, situated in Mayfair’s Brick Street.

Peter Wetherell, a Mayfair estate agent, explains that the rent is cheaper than the bill for a suite, or suites, in one of the deluxe hotels that line nearby Park Lane. A star, plus entourage, would have room to rest and play in the apartment, as there are seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms and two kitchens.

If this celebrity decided on a longer stay in London — more than six months, say — then Ms Morton would be willing to drop the price to £30,000 a week. This would be a record for a long-term let.

Ms Morton says that the lettings market, which was badly damaged by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, is coming out of the doldrums. She says: “Everyone has been worried that there’s going to be a W-shaped recovery, but there is no sign of that.”

However, one group usually fonder than anything of a prime Central London address does not yet seem to be cheered by the lifting of economic gloom. Not so long ago, a super-rich international businessman would have been seen as the likely customer for the Brick Street rental. But many among the loaded are said to be sulking just now: their net worth has shrunk somewhat, despite the stock market’s resurgence, and they are not romping around Central London accumulating real estate. The absence of Americans has been noted.

Ed Mead, of Douglas & Gordon, the estate agents, says: “The demand for really high-end £3,000-£4,000 per sq ft places is much diminished; it will come back, but it’s going to take a little bit longer. Some of the developments in this market segment are beautiful, but demand is at an all-time low.”

However, the return of bonuses and a slightly greater supply of finance means that younger City executives are becoming increasingly active.

This means, as Mr Mead explains, that there is little problem selling anything under £3 million. The market for a £2.1 million Chelsea penthouse on sale through Savills is the twentysomething European banker paying cash, not the fiftysomething tycoon who, in the spring, would have been acquiring a home for his children.

Cash and competitively priced mortgages are enabling the twenty-and thirtysomething City buyers to scale the housing ladder.

David Salvi, of Hurford Salvi Carr, the estate agents, who specialises in Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell and Docklands, says: “Lots of people are moving within an area, from a a two-bed flat into a three-bed penthouse or from a three-bed penthouse to a house.”

As Mr Wetherell says: “Some people are having a very good recession.”

James Bond style in stable

A skip and discarded boxes are delights you find if you view Brick Street, W1, on Google Street View (Judith Heywood writes). Yet in this unappealing dogleg is one of the most lavish properties to grace London’s rental market: a seven-bedroom pied-a-terre to let at £40,000 a week, short term.

This is no grand townhouse, but a former coachhouse and stables, built for the Marquess of Londonderry in the 1880s. Its fine terracotta-dressed façade, tucked between Piccadilly and Old Park Lane, masks modern must-haves for the international super-rich. It has underground parking, with car lift, a pool, a cinema room, a gym and eight reception rooms.

Peter Wetherell, the Mayfair agent, said: “I have always known it as the James Bond house. It has all the electrics, all the gadgets, all the gimmicks.”

The letting agent, WA Ellis, expects keen interest. Ellis’s Lucy Morton says that the 17,000 sq ft property is “the best on the lettings market in all of London”. A long-term let will be £30,000 a week, still a record for a bolthole of this type in London, she says.

Penthouse fit for a City boy

City money is returning to Chelsea (Lucy Alexander writes). An estate agent selling a £2.1 million three-bed penthouse flat on the Kings Road was confidently specific yesterday that the buyer would be “a European banker aged between 26 and early 30s, paying cash. Earlier this year it would have been an older buyer, between 40 and 60, who was buying it for his kids. They were the only ones who had any money. But now the bankers are back.” Charlie Bubear, of Savills, added that in his Knightsbridge office “we have had our biggest September on record”.

The flat is certainly special. Occupying the thirteenth and fourteenth floors of a former 1960s council tower block, which received a questionable facelift in the 1980s (think yellow plastic cladding), it has a spectacular 180-degree view of London, from the western suburbs to Canary Wharf in the east. Such a view is unique for a private home in Chelsea. The owners Warren Hall, a property finder, and his wife Kirsty, a private PA, have lavished money on the 1,539 sq ft flat since they bought it in 2006, creating an opulent but low-maintenance flat. Crucial for the single City boy.

Bayswater flats tick the boxes

No 4 Connaught Place meets a number of the requirements for the buyer of a luxe London apartment (Anne Ashworth writes). The first of these is slick modernity behind a period façade, popular with Russians and almost everybody else. The Grade II-listed house, for which Knight Frank is the agent, was built in 1812.

Until recently it was Cadbury’s corporate HQ, but it has been buffed up and converted into ten flats. Noughties minimalism reigns inside the flats, although Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands, the architects, have preserved the ornamention on the walls of the ballroom. This is the colossal sitting room of one flat.

Another plus is the location, by Marble Arch, seconds away from Connaught Square, where stands the Bayswater mansion of Tony Blair, the former prime minister. Prices range from £1.1 million to £3 million for the three-bedroom apartment on the entire first floor and half of the flats are sold.

Adam Starr, investment director at Redevco, the developers, said that buyers see “the potential for upside” on their Bayswater investment. Will this be one of Mr Blair’s long-term legacies?

Source: ' Sunday Times '

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